MATHEMATICS
They Call Him the ‘Mozart of Math’
Terence Tao
Title: Professor of Mathematics, University of California,
Los Angeles
Education: Ph.D., Math, Princeton University; M.Sc.
and B.Sc., Math, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
Age: 31
Talk about a very good year. Last August, Dr. Terence Tao won the prestigious Fields Medal — often described as the Nobel Prize in mathematics — at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain. The Fields Medal is especially meaningful in that it is awarded once every four years. A month after receiving the Fields Medal, the UCLA math professor also won a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. The two high-profile awards are only the latest accolades for the native of Australia.
To say success has come early to Tao would be an understatement. His extraordinary mathematical ability was recognized at the
age of 2.
“Apparently, I liked teaching the children of my parents’ friends how to solve the math I saw on ‘Sesame Street,’” says Tao. At age 7, he was attending high school and studying calculus. At 9, when most children were learning basic word problems, Tao was enrolled at Flinders University in Australia and acing college-level calculus. At 20, he had earned his doctorate from Princeton University and joined UCLA’s math faculty. By 24, he was a full professor.
